| Joanne Kathleen Rowling (1965-), a British novelist, is best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series (1997-2007). Her accessible style, humour, twisty but comprehensible plots and ability to people her world with vividly sketched characters have inspired Pottermania among different ages all over the world. Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Secrets (1999) is the second book of the fantasy series. It is prolific of fantastic elements and has won high praise and awards from critics, young readers, and the book industry. The novel describes the return of the evil wizard Voldemort who appears in a new form and the fight between this artful scoundrel and the courageous slinky hero-Harry.Based on genre theory, this thesis will focus on the fantastic elements in the novel and go a further step to interpret their metaphorical significance.There are mainly four kinds of conventional fantastic elements in the novel:the fantastic places, the fantastic beings, the fantastic tools, and the fantastic powers. Through a thorough analysis, it is found that most of these elements have their archetypes in mythology, fairy tales, folklores and legends. By mixing these elements, Rowling not only tries to attract readers, but also uses them to express the metaphorical significance of these fantastic elements:people are different; tolerance is a kind of virtue; individual existence and success depend on community; personal choice determines one’s life course.Probably, it is the very metaphorical significance of these fantastic elements that makes Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets a unique charm among the series. |
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